An Oregon Year
We conclude our first cycle of seasons in Astoria. I can offer some impressions, many of which I have sifted through over the past twelve months in the AFH Blog, in conversations with new and old friends, and through the network of communications I have have developed and maintained for that purpose for decades. The Northwest Coast of the United States is astounding in its beauty. The natural power of the region can be restorative and destructive by turns. The Pacific, the Columbia and the mountainous forest land contain wildlife that even yet thrives. Many of the inhabitants remain connected to the environment for survival, and some people yet prosper from the fruits of Creation. Farming, fishing, hunting, trapping and such persist not only as past-time, but in material real time, as the primary source of sustaining life and life-way. This fact shapes and informs what else drives Oregonian economy, politics, culture. Education here contains the memory of bust-boom industrial cycles for logging, gill-netting and game-based commerce, with more than the past in mind. The history of Oregon is unfolding, and as such the imagination spans change stretching to the time of exclusively indigenous human habitation. Teaching encompasses maritime occupations, weaponry and tasks associated with pioneering. The topology of the imagination is connected to both man-made and geological landmarks (although it should be noted that some of area’s most compelling features are fluid). In Astoria, the bridges and the Column pronounce local identity, but so do the ships that come and go daily. Just offshore, the whales migrate north and south through often dangerously stormy seas. This section of Oregon is linked to the rest of the world by its furtive waters, and their navigators. Alaska seems to hover in the consciousness, not only as a wild frontier, but as an affirmation of intense will. That other state is within reach, on the horizon, and it contains stories that can veer into epic territory with not too much exaggeration. The bloodlines of people in these parts are in unusual measure active. The ties among the folk can be counted in generations, but also described in tales of migration and settling. The Old and New Country exist simultaneously for many, and this is true for everyone now, due to contemporary conditions as much as colonial and post-colonial ones. The Internet has impacted the Pacific Northwest like everywhere else, but added elements pertain to the proximity of Redland, Cupertino, Silicon Valley and the Western tech hubs. Likewise the strategic value of the place is reflected in military presence, as old as America herself. The complex proposition of ownership, of laws of property, thread through all facets of this society. While the same can be said about most of the world at this point, the transparency of the matrix of owned things is colored by the issue of space. Possession is more visible. The homeless and destitute are not well hidden, and marginally integrate within fairly stable systems. The hallmarks of American democracy, local to federal, are expressed in the community, but so are the profound externalities that function to subvert democracy in all directions. It follows then that Astoria and other Northwest Coastal localities offer some of the best kind of democratic arts and culture, in both individual and collective forms. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the demographics and statistical logic create a profile for the typical NWC personhood that is very different than the one we abandoned in Bushwick. For me, this is a significant divergence, but no more than the experiential shift associated with population density, technological compression, wealth consolidation and other such factors. I continue to process the perception of such phenomena, including art itself, from a distance that I would not necessarily call “safe.”
Currents, Flow and Reproduction Series #46
4D Quantities Series #9
Vinyl on Wood
15.5" x 11"
$1850
4D-SCAN
As the leaves changed color for Autumn, I pursued a plenitude of leads, trying to assemble a narrative to account for what is happening. What follows is a summary of my findings. Think of my mission as a foray into the cave of wonder, a subterranean labyrinth to wander. I pause at seams that sparkle and shine, if only for an instant in the glow of my torch. Some of these veins contain nuggets of wisdom and insight into the dreams of the world above. There live monsters who lurk in the shadows, down convoluted tunnels, but I look upon them, too. I may stop and fashion a fire, illuminating markings on the walls and ceilings of the underground maze. I have been preceded. I scrawl notes to read in the light of the Sun. After a while I return to the surface, emerging a different man than he who entered the portal to the nether regions of this land. …So, yes, I watched the Hobbit again (with my son, who is seven), but I also watched The Joker, which is very informative, differently. I noticed the potent efforts to suppress access to any clip that captures the madcap, Dionysian bliss performed by Joaquin Phoenix costumed in the villain’s role in his post-transformation dance down New York City stone steps, bewildered detectives close behind. The descent into a swirl of masked violence, through a sequence of chaotic, murderous acts and events, unfold in a terrifying sequence. The unspeakable, undo-able are demonstrated. The rich are gunned down in alleyways. Rioters gain the upper hand on police. A television personality’s brains are blown through the back of his skull with the aid of a sidearm wielded by a lunatic on live TV. The soundtrack is excellent! In the next several days consequent to the massively successful opening of the film in US theaters, the punditry expresses horror and outrage at the scene. The jailed pedophile Gary Glitter is publicly pilloried again, to make a smart association between the rock’n’roll attraction of Phoenix’s Joker’s transgressions and child abuse, amplified by the false story that Glitter will be enriched by the popularity of the movie, and the excellent use of Glitter’s ubiquitous anthem in it. Almost no easy replay version of the clip can be found on the web, which is impossible, and implausible, given that millions of users are clamoring to see for themselves what all the buzz is about. Waves of negative press wash over the meme phenomenon generated by the Joker dance. Nothing works to derail this mediatic runaway train. The times they are a-changin’. What else? Mr. Robot is back, and Season Four is perfectly timed. I view the first several episodes excitedly. The NBA and South Park versus China plays out in the media-verse, accidentally rupturing the slow-crawl effusion of Sino-censorship, which threatens free speech in the West, primarily through the complicity of corporate industrial “culture” and the cowardice of corrupt politicians. Remember when representation of the Prophet Muhammad struck terror in the hearts of the editorial class, due to terrorist reprisals? Those days seem quaint in comparison. Isn’t America waging economic war with China? Are you with us, or against us, Apple? The squirm among the globalist oligarch class is intensifying, in large measure because of the rise of Elizabeth Warren, and the heroic refusal of Bernie Sanders to disappear, or die by heart attack, or at least come to his senses and capitulate to the “moderate” branch of the Democratic party and their syndicate owners. No, Bernie crushes through his heart attack, gains the sanction of AOC and the so-called Squad (this election’s version of Bernie Bros) and comes out killin’ it in NYC in front of a Yuge crowd of “fans.” Leon Cooperman uses dirty words on CNBC to decry the animus against billionaires, undermined by the fact he is one. Warren approves of his message, that the super-rich are afraid of Warren. Cooperman claims Wall Street will shut down if she or Bern are elected President. Isn’t such talk seditious, treasonous? Whose team are you on, Cooperman?! I tried to watch the star-studded Netflix movie The Laundromat, but discovered the Big Short cinemagraphic approach to the story insufficient. I recommend the reader consume the narrative in its native formats, which are in actuality far more compelling. A concerned citizen might question why so little has been done by the world’s legislative and police bodies to shut down the tax evasion industrial complex. When will the Queen, Bono, all the dope cartels, oligarch class and their heirs and spouses, etc. be brought to heel for their wanton racketeering criminality? Certainly the enforcement authorities and their armies are prodigiously capable of taking anyone in the world down. Why not point the Big Guns of Justice at those who are, contrary to Cooperman’s assertions, the planet’s most accomplished and dangerous outlaws? Yes, I do keep up with the Impeachment proceedings. How can one not? The enormity of the implications for Americans are only challenged by the small potatoes nothing burger content propelling the campaign to unseat the POTUS. All of it is so corrupt and brazen, which is indicative of Washington, D.C., the federal government, being run like a business, for business, by business people. Deals are being made. In Syria, Ukraine, with Iraq-Iran-Israel-Afghanistan-Saudi Arabia-Yemen-Lebanon-Qatar-UAE-Turkey, they are wheelin’n’dealin’, and blood flows like wine at a wedding! In other news: Brexit is a case study in globalist, anti-democratic stall tactical proficiency (see the Clash, greatest hit); Hong Kong is fighting in the streets (no, not going to mention Sir Elton); so is Chile; so is Barcelona; and Haiti. Argentina and Brazil did their rioting over the summer. Mexico just averted war with El Chapo’s cartel. The Yellow Vest movement has receded, but can we just give those French populists a shout-out? What a run! I wouldn’t even know where to begin in cataloguing the protest movements everywhere. HERE is CNN’s take on it, LoL, which points a finger at INEQUALITY, an analysis that is about as profound as those that point the finger at big abstractions, like ECONOMY, or THE WEATHER. OK, but, returning to the corporate media matrix and policy, I am intently monitoring the cooperative, collective measures used to ensure that Bernie Sanders would never be elected President of the US. This IS a conspiracy, but we knew that in 2016, and learned much about the mechanics of the MSM collaboration with DNC and the Candidate Clinton machine in the aftermath of the campaign. Today, that bit of inglorious history has been whitewashed to death. How can any unbiased observer not recognize that the Dem Primary field was inundated with unelectable challengers selected specifically by handlers to diminish the prohibitive front runner, Mr. Sanders? The blatant cynicism of the strategy and tactics is flat-out un-American! Remember, we are an optimistic, naive nation. Sure, the accusations that the USA is a greedy and violent empire, like all those others we rebelled against or rejected or fought wars with, resonate, but only if you are willing to ignore the intentional conflation of America, as such, and the predatory class that live gloriously on our country’s teats, and have done so practically from our nation’s founding. The general worry right now (as ever) is that a permanent abolition of the GLOBAL, RICH, POWERFUL, REPRODUCTIVE CLASS is in the works, and will finally, this time, come to pass. Well, speaking for myself, I am waiting for the English translation (from the French, speaking of two of modernity’s big empires, now significantly reduced) of Thomas Piketty’s new book, a sequel to Capital in the Twenty-First Century, slated to be out in the Spring, for maximum impact on the 2020 US elections. It is, in the meantime, very gratifying to note that the evil bastard Larry Summers is vilifying research by Piketty associates, and evidently, that Michael Bloomberg and Ms. Clinton and Mrs. Obama are contemplating late-term entry to the competition for the Presidency, to be, lest we forget, THE MOST POWERFUL PERSON ON THE PLANET EARTH (harhar).
Currents, Flow and Reproduction Series #45
4D Quantities Series #8
Vinyl on Canvas
12" x 9"
$1050
Then it came to my attention that Mark Zuckerberg, the unimaginably wealthy CEO of Facebook, has embarked on a new venture: the establishment of a virtual currency, the Libra. This author is no economist, but it seems to me that Libra poses an existential threat not only to the power of the purse of the US Department of the Treasury and the mob at the Federal Reserve, intricately networked with the global financial syndicates. Zuckerberg is in plain sight lobbying to usurp and centralize commerce within the auspices of his social media mega-company, amidst a swirl of prohibitive movements to curtail the all-directional influence of Facebook and the super-rich class to which Mark belongs. Conveniently for Zuckerberg and other ne’er-do-wells engaged in white-collar hooliganism, the surviving, ever-consolidating press in nearly its entirety is quietly converting to a model that affords the citizen - desirous of informatic democracy - to submit to a few free articles per month before acquiring a low-cost subscription to his preferred news outlets. Behind the darkly tinted glass of the current media topography, operations of vast import are kept from the people most impacted by them. Who is investigating the deals being done to save Big Pharma from its opioid comeuppance, or the latest scandals of the cheaters in the banking and trader industries? Who is tracking the geopolitical aspirations and machinations of our furtive enemies, and the proxy wars they engender, to more than a cursory or hackneyed extent? The stories we are fed by talking heads become more confounding by the minute. Is Tulsi Gabbard, as not-quite-out-to-pasture Hillary claims, in fact a RUSSIAN ASSET, or an ASSAD ASSET? The assertion is nonsensical on its face. Gabbard is a lovely war veteran, National Guard Captain, US Representative from Hawaii and Presidential candidate! Yet, heavy consideration of Clinton’s libelous claim is echoed by warmongering public, commercial and private agents appearing across the media spectrum. Simultaneously, Bernie’s platform for revolutionary displacement, even erasure, of the status quo for systemic inequality is buried or ignored, even though substantial majorities of constituents support them. Americans want public education, from kindergarten through four-year university. Americans want to tax billionaires out of existence, through progressive wealth and income tax provisions. Americans want public health care, Medicare for all. Americans want a living wage for meaningful work, which entails the development of domestic manufacturing, the end of off-shoring and outsourcing, and the reversal of coordinated efforts by industry titans to disenfranchise this country’s labor force. Despite decades of pro-Capital propaganda, America wants collective bargaining, the right to strike, stronger unions. America wants the profit incentive to be removed from the prison system, the health care system, the education system, the military. America wants neo-liberal and -conservative privatization and de-regulation to end. America wants racial and gender equality. America believes in the Constitutionnal separation of Church and State. America has no King or Queen, and does not want a neo-aristocracy. America wants a prosperous middle class. America wants judicial equality for all citizens, that we be all accountable under the same set of laws. America wants by and large the de-criminalization of daily life, including the stuff that earlier regimes defined as vice, and re-criminalization of bad business practice and political malfeasance. Americans want money out of politics. Americans want a new Fairness Doctrine for media. Americans want to nationalize communications and media, and the re-implementation of Net Neutrality. Americans want to democratize technology. Americans want equal economic, social and personal opportunity for all. Americans want clean energy. Americans want an end to polluting industries. Americans want a cohesive, comprehensive approach to Climate Change. Americans want respect and resources for science and teaching. Americans want to rein in the the out-of-control, criminal financial sector, by extreme means, if necessary. Americans want fair trade. Americans want alliances with nations that align in word and deed with our Constitutional, representative democracy. America wants their political representatives to represent all Americans, not just the rich and powerful. America wants healthy food, which involves a wholesale reconfiguration of the ranching, farming and food delivery industries. Americans want a healthy environment and want to preserve the natural beauty of this country, which points to expansion of parks and monuments across the land. America wants a strong military and police to protect the citizenry and the nation itself. America wants not to be spied on by a tech-enabled spook industrial complex. America wants its art to represent our vision of the world, not the narcisstic interests of oligarchs or the monopolistic programming of international corporate culture syndicates. Americans want their children to do better than the previous generation. Americans want an end to global economic and military interventionism on behalf of the Davos set and their minions. Americans want an end to the practice of predatory globalism. It may sound pie-in-the-sky, but Americans want to be friends with people everywhere, if possible. Americans want real local-to-global community, which requires the maintenance of bottom-to-top infrastructure, material and social. Americans want an end to a few people who derive the great proportion of their wealth and power by exploiting everyone not among the wealthiest and most powerful, and everything that can be bought and sold, no matter the cost. Americans want quality of life, and the end of Austerity in all its malicious manifestations. Americans fought and died to end slavery, and want a living wage now - because wage slavery is still slavery. Americans cannot abide torture and war crimes, and we want those who committed or commit it in our names to be brought to justice for war crimes. Americans want an end to war profiteering, specifically, and enrichment from misery in general. Americans want the financial sector to pay for what they have done, and continue to do, to maim and brutalize the American Dream. Americans want freedom, more than ever. Americans want our vision, our imagination, our MOJO - back. It was stolen by evildoers. We don’t want them to get away with it any more.
Currents, Flow and Reproduction Series #44
4D Quantities Series #7
Vinyl on Canvas
14" x 10"
$1200
When I write a paragraph like the one above, I tend to think of men like my Uncle Bob, who inspire unequivocal feelings like gratitude, respect and patriotism. In my research I am often drawn to people who stand for substance in the range of the unequivocal, people like Scandinavian teen phenom Greta Thunberg, whose meteoric rise to international prominence has caused trepidation for those whose positions and possessions depend inordinately on the domination and debasement of Nature through a host of exploitation/extraction schemes and regimes. In this context, one may celebrate the demise of arch-villain David Koch, also noting the pussyfooting by all parties still indentured to the Koch empire in hailing his shedding the old mortal coil. I remain elevated to a degree, by a modicum of hopefulness for a different future, based on study of possible outcomes in 4D modeling. Time grants 4D perspective, and types of language permit us to suspend content in visionary spatial context for analysis. In October, I revisited all the classic interviews of Malachi Martin by Art Bell, plus (bonus) appearances by Dr./Fr. Martin on Firing Line with William F. Buckley. I took in a bunch of Joe Rogan podcasts, in whole or part, including new conversations with atheist Richard Dawkins, Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer, retired boxer Evander Holyfield and about a dozen others, as well as a bunch of samples from the JRE archive. I took in the latest episodes of the ArtFight podcast out of Nashville, too. More: Richard Tuttle speaking and performance reading at ICA; the hilarious Irish horror film Extra Ordinary; the KILI interview with Arvol Lookinghorse (who met with Greta T), in which Arvol explained his motivations for sequestering the Sacred Pipe Bundle for four years; accounts of NY MoMA’s re-opening, which deserves, even requires, in-depth consideration, which I will get to elsewhere; the profound lectures by Alexander Galloway on the Virtual and Analog, and others; the lecture by Friedrich Kittler I attended in 2010 at EGS on Turing and Shannon; a breakdown in Bloomberg with data visualization of the biggest landowners in America; the Neuromancer by William Gibson; For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign by Jean Baudrillard; The Sublime Object of Ideology by Slavoj Zizek; Recodings | Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics by Hal Foster; Cybernetics for the Twenty-First Century: An Interview with Philosopher Yuk Hui by Geert Lovink; a Bruce Sterling account of Burning Man (1996)… My routine compendium rotates coverage among diverse sources: the UFC, including fights and news, especially at MMAJunkie; college football, with particular attention on several teams (Notre Dame, West Virginia, now Oregon, and even USC, Tennessee, Texas); pro boxing and basketball (Golden State); Matt Taibbi; the art world, from many angles, with news gleaned from Artforum, ArtNews, The Art Newspaper, HyperAllergic (although I am increasingly disenfranchised by its editorial bias) and especially the reviews by Joseph Nechvatal, artnet News, particularly Ben Davis, but also others there; e-flux; Politico; WaPo; NY Times; Salon; Daily Caller; The Guardian; Bloomberg; Forbes; LA Times and Weekly; New Republic; FAIR; The Atlantic; NY Magazine; the New Yorker; Austin Statesman and Chronicle; Nashvillian and Nashville Scene… I receive dozens of email invitations to exhibitions around the world every week. One caught my eye this month - William Powhida’s “Complicities” at Postmasters in NYC, a show that ought to be assessed in conjunction with Guardian article linked below… Periodically I visit VICE, Vanity Fair, Slate, sundry entertainment journals, usually for verification. In October, I read dozens of articles consisting of stunning revelations, and didn’t have to venture into the tabloids to do so, although some stories did involve aliens and Area 51. Donald Trump’s attorney claims the POTUS in fact could commit murder on 5th Avenue and not be prosecuted for it! POTUS called House Speaker Pelosi bad names! Quid pro quo is a business-as-usual component of US foreign policy, and utilizing QPQ diplomacy to dredge muck on domestic political opposition is cool, so argues that red-handed apparatchik Mulvaney! Let’s have the G7 meet at my Doral resort (POTUS)! Backlash. Phony Emoluments clause! Traitors! This Presidency is costing me Billions! …Such clangorous upheavals blur the borders of democracy, yes, and they dissolve other vital news pieces, as if by some dark media sorcery. Jeffrey Epstein’s supposed suicide in prison? Gone from the newsroom almost overnight. What of the Global Elite intertwined in his pedophiliac sex network? Nothing and no one to see here (ahem, Prince Andrew, Bills Clinton and Gates, Woody Allen, et al.). What about the Bahamas, or Puerto Rico, or any of the many principalities devastated by natural disaster (erm, climate change)? Extinctions (and the city-clogging protest movement)? Move along. Even Trump’s Wall spins in and out of focus, contingent on the latest episode of chaos in the Trumpisphere. And what about so-called non-critical infrastructure? Or even the critical kind? And the legislative work necessary to conceive and execute it? I will, with admittedly less frequency in the past few years, indulge in Utopian prospects. Obviously, there is no room at all to consider nationalizing America’s museums, but why not at least float the idea! According to the click-driven mediation classes, folks just don’t have bandwidth for it. Radical awareness is shifting into neutral at exactly the wrong moment. What used to be the party-line, that information consumers were warped by the web-borne barrage of TMI, that our attention spans were decelerating at an alarming pace, because of the flawed delivery systems of contemporary media and communications technology, has given way to the admonishment that we are fatigued by all the weird bad newstuff pounding our reality relentlessly (Trumpism). What is regularly lost in superficial diagnoses of media matters is this - one man’s media malaise favors some is another’s stupendous fortune. Confusion can be applied tactically (e.g., the battle over pronouns in the gender/sexuality wars). Overwhelming the senses has its uses. The keen media analyst must acknowledge that beyond desensitizing the consumer to senselessness, creating farce from Civilization-wide tragedy distracts the victim from the intentionality driving the most disturbing phenomena. I would argue we need to parse the logic of "creative destruction posing as information. The news itself may not be fake, but its mission is. How is one to read the cryptic, Jeff Bezos-owned WaPo motto, “Democracy Dies in Darkness”? Did I mention the story about another worker dying in an Amazon facility? The DDoS-like cacophony in the mediasphere and cyberspace I think ought to be 4D analyzed in the same phenomenal set as obesity, drug addiction and other forms of dependency, suicide, homelessness, non-participation in the labor force, non-voting trends and other symptoms of despair and absence of social enfranchisement. Impulsiveness, bingeing, over-indulgence, sedation, oh yes, and inexplicable violence.
Uncle Bob at his desk in the Sigmund-McLean offices (Beckley, WV) ~ RIP.